65% of population to be covered by FM soon: Govt

The government today said, 65 per cent of the country’s population will be covered by FM transmitters soon.

Replying to questions in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore said, now 52 per cent of the population is covered by FM transmitters.

Replying to supplementaries, Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani said, 57 All India Radio (AIR) towers are shared with private broadcasters on rental basis. Informing this in the Lok Sabha, she said, the revenue from sharing of AIR/DD towers during 2016-17 was about 41 crore rupees.

Mrs Irani told the House that Prasar Bharati has informed that as of now at 32 places BSNL/MTNL are using Prasar Bharati infrastructure on rental basis.

She said, in order to synergise efforts for multiple utilization of resources and sharing of existing capacities towers of both Information and Broadcasting ministry and department of telecommunications (including BSNL and MTNL) have been formed on January 28th in 2015 to ascertain technical feasibility and decide terms and conditions of infrastructure sharing.